The origin of all life on Earth is an endlessly interesting question, at least for those who don’t claim “because someone spoke and then it happened.” Some scientists are moving beyond discussing the question with the incredibly awesome, and obvious, idea of “Let’s just build our own and see what was needed!” Researchers are developing their very own proto-life, from scratch, and they’ve already learned an incredible amount.
One team working on an observable genesis is the Szostak lab in Massachusetts General Hospital. They’ve reduced the problem to two simple components: a replicating set of instructions, and a simple shell which can protect that pattern from everything around it. As any DIY practicioner will tell you it’s only when you try to do something that you really learn about the astonishing array of niggling details that need sorting, and it turns out life itself is a little more complicated than hanging a coat rack.
The protocell has to allow nutrients from the outside to leak in, but prevent the genetic pattern from poking out, it has to be built out of an inert material (as far as the genetic cargo is concerned), and tolerate a wide range of temperatures - both to survive the outside world, and so it isn’t blown up by biochemical reactions inside the cell. This and an array of other factors have been overcome, and the team have constructed a simple fatty acid vesicle which acts as a proto-cell wall. The ‘cell’ can even stretch and split (with a tiny nudge from the outside, which is still less external help than Intelligent Designers require).
They’ve also completed example nucleic acid copying mechanisms inside such a cell, making it Life v0.1, though (as with any alpha model) there are a lot of fixes and patches required. But for a work in progress, Proto-Life has already taught its creators a lot, and they’ll learn a lot more when they finish it. Whether it’s actually a model of our own life or not - in fact, building a brand new cell structure would be even more interesting.
Luke McKinney
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